


Fort Davis

by moustache_bonnet



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Found Family, HDM Holiday Gift Exchange, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:14:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28919637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moustache_bonnet/pseuds/moustache_bonnet
Summary: Lee takes his two feral children on a trip around Texas purely for the purpose of telling them horror stories by a campfire.
Relationships: Lyra Belacqua & Lee Scoresby, Lyra Belacqua & Roger Parslow, Roger Parslow & Lee Scoresby
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	Fort Davis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angie_lacs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angie_lacs/gifts).



> This shorty is a HDM Holiday Exchange 2020 gift for [Angie-Lacs](https://angie-lacs.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr. Prompts I chose were: _Lee lives and adopts Lyra and Roger AU, Lee and the kids relaxing by an open fire in Texas at night._ Hope you'll like it!
> 
> The legend of the Skinwalkers is based on [this article](https://www.legendsofamerica.com/navajo-skinwalkers/)\--if there's any inconsistency regarding the facts in my writing (obviously the bit with the daemons is made up for the purposes of the HDM universe), I will be most happy would you let me know.

“Wake up, little one, it’s time to call for dinner,” says Roger Parslow's dæmon in hope to pluck him from the dream on which he almost drifts away. But it’s only the intensifying smell of bread toasting over the fire that eventually brings him back to his senses.

Roger is anything but little now--he’s fourteen and as desperately lanky as a boy of this age can be, easily taller than Lyra by an inch or so, and doesn’t forget to be jokingly smug about it on every presented opportunity. Salcilia is equally long-limbed as her person and strong as a bull, settled since last Christmas as an English Setter. She tugs at his sleeve, gently at first, then pulling him to his feet with such ease as if he were a ragdoll.

“Alright, alright, I’m coming,” moans Roger.

He shakes off the bedroll with which he loosely covered himself--he never thought a night in a prairie to be so cold, even in the hills. Lee could have warned them beforehand about the fickle weather. Not like it’s the biggest or _only_ miscalculation the poor man had made in regard to their first trip around the Country of Texas--though Roger would be needlessly harsh if he wouldn't give him at least _some_ credit.

He’s doing his best after all, things considered. Such as having two feral teenagers in his care.

Roger kneels by the fire and while he replaces the toast in the pan with meticulously cut swabs of bacon he glances over to where Lee and Lyra are trying hard to secure the balloon upon a slope on which they had managed to land it.

“Dinner’s ready in a minute!” he calls to them.

Lee acknowledges him with a wave. The two then continue to run around adjusting valves, and checking pressure, and disengaging canisters until the work finally seems to be done and the only thing left is to draw the tarpaulin over the gondola to keep the burners dry. When Lyra makes her way to the campsite with Pan at her heel, the bacon is already sizzling loudly, drowned in a fair pool of grease. The smell is mouth-watering.

“Bacon sandwiches with a packet of crisps on the side! You’re the best kitchen boy there is, Roger,” Lyra praises.

He gives her a pleased smile. “Tomorrow we can go foraging for roots and I’ll make us some soup for lunch. Lee en’t coming?”

“In a second, he wants to double-check everything. Let’s make him some coffee, yeah?” Lyra says. Together they manage to fill and assemble the battered steel moka pot that Lee carries around everywhere, and place it amid a pile of blazing embers where the water will come to a boil just as they need it.

The moments before the steam starts rising from the spout they fill actively: Roger adds a finishing touch to the sandwiches, dabbing the toast with barbeque sauce that he cooked himself last Winter; while Lyra writes in her journal--she tells anybody who will listen she’s writing the next famous guidebook to the Davis Mountains. The family knows, though, the notebook is just a bunch of doodles of birds, and lizards, and of Pantalaimon lounging in the sun, and pages and pages of unrelated notes.

Pan plays cautiously around the campfire with Salcilia.

Only a sudden loud sound disturbs the serene scene of carefree familiarity; a howl somewhere in the distance which the dæmons notice first.

Roger looks up from under his brow, having just arranged last of the sandwiches and crisps onto a tin plate. His breath stills on instinct so that he would hear better.

The cry drags on forever. Another joins it not too long after, in a response.

They’re high-pitched, and heartbreaking, and apocalyptic, and unlike anything they all had heard before. Salcilia’s hair stands on end; a growl grows inside her throat. Roger holds her so close that the side of his face falls deep into her fur, the spots on her neck almost precisely mimicking the pattern of his freckles.

Pan has more courage to spare but he also shuffles uncomfortably in place. “What d’you think it is?” the marten asks nobody in particular.

It’s Lyra who replies first, with an ingenuity characteristic of her. She appears to be unperturbed by the noises. “Oh, it’s probably just the witches,” she says as if indifferently, but from the corner of her eye she carefully observes the reaction.

“What,” Roger says.

“Yeah, you didn’t know they live here too?” Lyra continues without a beat of hesitation. “Except, they en’t beautiful and good like Serafina. They’re more like Cliff Ghasts, huge and winged, and hairy, always preying on ignorant travelers.”

“Are they bollocks,” her brother says dubiously. He decides he’s far too old to believe in every little thing she makes up, even though the memory of the appalling creatures she mentions still lives in his recent memory.

“It’s true!” Lyra claims.

“No, it en’t!”

“So it is! Lee told me, haven’t you.” With an unshaken determination she turns to Lee who is at last settling down by the fire.

“Have I what,” he huffs. He reaches for the sandwiches, swathing them gingerly with leftover grease from the pan despite Hester’s worded disapproval (“Lee, your heart!”).

“About the howling, that it’s the witches,” Lyra repeats.

“The witches,” Lee parrots, looking over her in utter confusion. She shoots him a conspicuous glare.

“Oh, yeah, the witches!” the æronaut hollers eventually around a mouthful of crisps, his eyebrow twisting in a significant expression. “Yeah, Skinwalkers they’re called. They like to snatch kids who eat one too many a bacon sandwich.”

Roger straightens but his body relaxes at once. His mouth protrudes into a judgmental pout as the two pranksters exchange an impish snicker. “Oh, ha-hardy-haa. Well done. From this one I would expect it but I thought you knew better, sir,” he scolds.

Lyra makes a face at him, and she stretches the length of her spine, and twists her neck into the posture of a mischievous, proud little weasel. Lee, on the other hand, lets compassion soften his attitude.

“Well,” he hums when another sorrowful howl reaches them from the depths of the night. “I’d say it sounds like a coyote. They don’t wander this high up, so there’s no need for worry, but then it still could be something else.”

“How d’you mean?” Roger prompts.

The man wolfs down his portion of food, then pours a mug of steaming coffee and makes himself comfortable on top of his bedroll, resting against a rock that immediately stains his coat an intense shade of red. “Lyra may be making fun of it, but what I told her ain’t nothing but the truth. The legend of Skinwalkers is passed down in the tribe of my mother’s through the generations. They call them _yee naaldlooshii_ and they bring misfortune to people in the form of an animal. They walk in a pair with their dæmon, but more often than not they have to learn to separate in order to change.”

Lyra crawls over to Roger to hold onto him and Pan squeezes between them--they’ve been brave enough for one evening. The legend unsettles them the same as it did the first time, if not more.

There is something in the still air, or maybe it’s the sudden silence filled with only the crackling of the fire that makes Lee’s words sound more ominous than they are. Remembering his mother also brings a sadness into his features, which adds a layer of importance to the story.

“They can even possess another human if they lock eyes with them,” Lee adds. Four pairs of these, wide as saucers, are presently locked onto his lips and he has to bring the mug up to hide a satisfied grin which Hester condemns with a shake of the head and a tired sigh. He gives the kids the best serious expression he can manage and finishes the narrative with a foreboding fatherly advice:

“Remember, whatever you do, don’t ever look a coyote in the eye.”


End file.
